7 ways FreshBooks can help you save time

September 29, 2014

Raise your hand if you could use a few extra hours in your day.

From dog-walkers to graphic designers, we could all use more time to put the finishing touches on a project, run some personal errands or squeeze in a little time to recharge. Time is more than just money. It is where we find inspiration, plan for the future and develop new skills. Sadly, time is something they’re not making any more of. So with that in mind, here are seven ways to elude father time.

Emailed Invoices

If you invoice your clients through the postal service, a “best-case-scenario” is that your client receives an invoice within the week. It can take much longer for you to then receive payment. For any business owner in need of some positive cash flow, this time limbo can feel more like a month in hell. Shave down some of that excruciating time by sending invoices via email in FreshBooks. As a bonus, you’ll even know exactly when your clients view their invoice—right down to the minute.

Online Payment

Now that you’re sending invoices straight to your client’s inbox, make it even easier for them to pay by accepting payments online. With FreshBooks you can create and send invoices to clients online and possibly even receive payment in the same day. All your client has to do is whip out their credit card to pay. No more checks or bank transfers. Just the money you need—lightning fast.

Late Payment Reminders

Late invoice payments can cause more than just sleepless nights. Consistent cash flow is the lifeblood of your business. Yet somehow, this reality can be lost on a late-paying client. Almost as frustrating as late payments is reminding clients to pay up. There’s hardly enough time in the day as it is, plus the task is, shall we say, less-than-enjoyable. Why force yourself to do all the reminding? Use the late payment reminder feature in FreshBooks to compose up to three messages that are automatically emailed to clients after a selected time period. It’s like having your own collections agency—minus the expense, of course.

Recurring Invoicing

If your billing is subscription-based (as in your clients pay the same amount on a set schedule) you will weep tears of joy after using FreshBooks’ Recurring Invoicing feature. Instead of creating and sending an invoice to your clients every cycle, simply make a single, repeatable profile to generate and send invoices for you. Reclaim literally hours of your life by putting your billing on cruise control—and try not to think too much about the time you did your billing manually.

Expense Imports

You financially-savvy business owners know the importance of accounting for each and every expense your business encounters. To stay on top of the numbers, you could manually enter these expenses into FreshBooks, or make things a little easier on yourself by connecting FreshBooks to your business bank account or credit card. Automatic, daily expense imports make it an absolute cinch to ensure every expense is accounted for—and you never had to manually enter a single item.

Mobile Time Tracking

If you bill for your time, you may be familiar with how time-consuming keeping track of all that time can be. The freelancer’s routine frequently involves doing the work, jotting down what they did and for how long, then compiling all the entries into an invoice come billing time. Now imagining a new routine, one where all you have to do is open FreshBooks on your phone or tablet, start the timer and log your hours when the work is done. No more fighting with spreadsheets, or entering time twice. When you’re ready to invoice your client, you can generate one from all the time you’ve logged in just a few clicks.

Mobile Expense Capture

Believe it or not, most business purchases take place outside of the office. So why wait to track your expenses until your return? Use FreshBooks on your phone or tablet to take photos of receipts and log expenses wherever you are. Gone are the days of crossing your fingers, hoping you’ll remember to do something when you get back to the office. By tracking expenses on the fly with FreshBooks for iOS and Android, you’ll save heaps of time and have one less ball to keep in the air.

Most of us would part with a limb to get an extra hour a day. Some of us would use that time to see loved ones, some to recharge our creative batteries, and some might even choose to work a little more (admit it, some of us would). Let FreshBooks do the heavy lifting of your day-to-day business activities and help save oodles of time where it counts. Reclaim your workday and hold on to those limbs—you’ll need them for all the high fives that will be coming your way.

Are you already billing like a boss or a master of mobile in FreshBooks? Share your productivity tips with other FreshBooks users and let the time-saving games begin!

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about the author

FreshBooks is the #1 accounting software in the cloud designed to make billing painless for small businesses and their teams. Today, over 10 million small businesses use FreshBooks to effortlessly send professional looking invoices, organize expenses and track their billable time.